From Thursday, June 1, 2017 You know, if there’s something you want to do… I think you should just go ahead and start doing it, and see what happens. That’s what I did, twenty-nine years ago. I thought I wanted to be a novelist, so I started writing a book…and here we all are, and what a long, strange trip it’s been, to be sure… Thanks so much to all of you who’ve been my companions on the journey, and here’s to many miles before us! Excerpt From OUTLANDER And in honor of World Outlander Day (evidently that’s today—June 1st. Who knew…?) — here’s a bit of one scene that’s not in the TV show, but that the book readers know well… Hashtags: #DailyLines, #OUTLANDER, #WaterWeed I gasped as his groping hand found its way between my legs. “Lord,” he said softly. “it’s slippery as waterweed.” “Jamie! There are twenty men sleeping right next to us!” I shouted in a whisper. “They wilna be sleeping long, if you keep talking.” […]
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SEVEN STONES in 2017
Book Nine—aka GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE—is coming along nicely, and thank you for your kind inquiries! I think it’s gonna be good. You may, however, have noticed that the main books of the OUTLANDER series are Rather Large, Somewhat Complex, and Lavishly Furnished with detail, context and other research-dependent appurtenances. All of which take time. So does running around the world talking to people and signing their books… Now, I mean no moral reproach, but will never understand why people are so insistent on WHEN will this (or any) book be out? Mostly because I’m not like that myself, at all — I have a couple of dozen authors whose work I buy on sight and with joyous anticipation of reading, but never once has it occurred to me to even think about when a new book will be published, let alone go and pester the author about it. I mean, It’s like standing over the site of a tulip bulb, shouting “When?” at the barren ground. […]
Seven Stones To Stand or Fall
What This Is… What this is, is a “Collection of Outlander Fiction,” as the cover states. It’s seven novellas, all written by me, and all dealing with the interesting side-stories and lacunae of the Outlander universe. Five of these novellas were originally published in various anthologies, and in the US/Canada, have then been published singly as ebooks. (Not, however, in the UK/Australia/NewZealand, Germany, etc.) The final two novellas of SEVEN STONES, though, are brand-new stories that have never been published! <g> In order, these are the novellas included in SEVEN STONES, with a brief description of each: 1. “The Custom of the Army” All things considered, it was probably the fault of the electric eel. In which, Lord John Grey’s encounter with said eel (to say nothing of a belligerent poet and Dr. John Hunter (a real surgeon, known for his great contributions to medicine, but known more colloquially in his own time as “the body-snatcher”) leads to him being sent to the wilds of Canada (pretty wild at the […]
“Mantalk” III: “Why We Fight”
On July 4, 2016, with this excerpt I announced the title of Book Nine of the OUTLANDER series: GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE. Note that some parts of the following excerpt (aka "Daily Lines") have appeared in the excerpts titled "Mantalk," and "Mantalk II." Social Media Hashtags: #DailyLines, #BookNine, #GoTellTheBeesThatIAmGone, #Yesthatsthetitle, #WhyWeFight, #HappyFourthOfJuly "And do Presbyterians have martyrs?" Jamie asked dubiously. "I mean—ye havena got saints, do ye?" "Why this sudden interest in Presbyterian doctrine?" Roger said, taking care to make the question a light one. "Thinking of converting?" He heard a brief grunt of amusement. "I am not. It’s only that I’ve been thinking of late." "Ye want to watch that sort of thing," Roger said, leaning down to unsnag a briar that had grabbed the knee of his breeks. "All right in moderation, I mean, but too much of it will give you the indigestion—mental and physical." "Ye’re no wrong there," Jamie said dryly. "Tell me a way to make it stop that doesna require […]
Two Covers
This blog is also a post on my official Facebook page, in response to a spirited debate there: Well, let’s see now. What you’re looking at are the cover of a free giveaway edition of OUTLANDER, at left, and the cover of a recent edition of Entertainment Weekly, further down on the right, featuring a shot of Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan as Claire and Jamie Fraser. (BTW, the cover on the left was written by me. Random House, a few years ago, decided to do targeted giveaways of OUTLANDER by street teams at public events, and they asked me what I thought about the cover for this promo edition. I didn’t like any of the sketches they’d shown me. They got fed up with me/ran out of time and asked me what I’d like on the cover, so I wrote that little thumbnail run-down of the contents, and the resident genii of the art department promptly turned it into an appealing cover.) OK. 1. What I’m seeing in the […]
News
April, 2024: “A Battle’s Not A War” Monday, April 2, 2024 A Happy and Blessed Easter (or other spring festival/contemplative occasion or feast involving eggs…) to you all! HAPPY EASTER-EGG! [Excerpt from (Untitled) BOOK TEN, Copyright © 2024 Diana Gabaldon] They stopped for the night near a small creek, having passed the afternoon in silence, and made camp and ate, with no more than the occasional grunt of inquiry and acknowledgement while sharing out the last of the cheese, hard-cooked eggs, and soaking the last of the rock-hard journeycake in the last of the cider. Finally, William cleared his throat, and Fraser looked at him, one bushy brow cocked. “We’re following them, aren’t we?” Read more of this new excerpt… March, 2024: The Vigil of Easter Saturday, March 30, 2024 Tonight is the Vigil of Easter, a service where we hear readings from the Bible regarding God’s deliverance of His people (e.g., the flight from Egypt and the path through the Red Sea), the reading of the Passion (the description […]
Happy Holidays!
MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHAG SAMEACH, JOYFUL KWANZAA, BLESSED SOLSTICE and/or a DELIGHTFUL EID-AlUdha to all of you! [Excerpt from DRUMS OF AUTUMN.] Jamie’s hair and shoulders were lightly dusted with snow, and flakes were settling on the exposed backs of his legs. I pulled the hem of his cloak down, then brushed the snow away from his face. His cheek was nearly the same color as the big wet flakes, and his flesh felt stiff when I touched it. Fresh alarm surged through me as I realized that he might be a lot closer to freezing already than I had thought. His eyes were half closed, and cold as it was, he didn’t seem to be shivering much. That was bloody dangerous; with no movement, his muscles were generating no heat, and what warmth he had was leaching slowly from his body. His cloak was already heavy with damp; if I allowed his clothes to become soaked through, he might very well die of hypothermia right in front of me. "Wake […]
“Cousin Amaranthus”
Below is an excerpt from Book Nine of my OUTLANDER novels. Note that there are SPOILERS… Facebook Hashtags: #DailyLines, #BookNINE, #NOitisntdoneyet, #IllTellYouWhenItIs, #HauldYourWheesht, #CousinAmaranthus, #ShesBenjaminsWidow "Hand me that, will you?" Amaranthus shifted the child expertly from one shoulder to the other and nodded toward another wadded cloth that lay on the ground near her feet. William picked it up gingerly, but it proved to be clean—for the moment. "Hasn’t he got a nurse?" he asked, handing the cloth over. "He did have," Amaranthus said, frowning slightly as she mopped the child’s face. "I sacked her." "Drunkenness?" he asked, recalling what Lord John had said about the cook. "Among other things. Drunk on occasion—too many of them—and dirty in her ways." "Dirty as in filth, or…er…lacking fastidiousness in her relations with the opposite sex?" She laughed, despite the subject. "Both. Did I not already know you to be Lord John’s son, that question would have made it clear. Or, rather," she amended, gathering the banyan more closely around her, "the phrasing […]
Scripts
Most of you have probably heard that I’m writing a script for one of the episodes of Season Two for the Outlander/Starz TV series. This is new and interesting—I’ve written comic book scripts for Walt Disney (waaaay back in the late 70′s) and I’ve written the script for a graphic novel (THE EXILE— for those of you who haven’t encountered it, it tells the story of the first third of OUTLANDER in graphic novel format—from Jamie’s and Murtagh’s point of view)—but I’ve never done a script for TV or movie before. Now, I have read a few of these. During the period when the books were under option to various producers who wanted to make a two-hour movie of OUTLANDER (something that is flat-out impossible to do, but many valiant attempts were made), I saw several movie scripts, most of them written by very reputable screenwriters. These were each uniquely horrible, but instructive. Then along came Ron D. Moore, and a TV series. While you still can’t fit a 300,000 […]
“Coloring Book”
If it weren’t for the coloring book, I might not have noticed immediately. In third or fourth grade, Brianna had had a coloring book featuring scenes from the American Revolution. Sanitized, suitably romantic scenes—Paul Revere flying through the night on a galloping horse, Washington crossing the Delaware while exhibiting (as Frank pointed out) a lamentable lack of seamanship…and a double-paged spread featuring Molly Pitcher, that gallant woman who had carried water to the heat-stricken troops (left-hand page), and then taken her wounded husband’s place to serve his cannon (right-hand page)—at the battle of Monmouth. Which, it had dawned on me, was very likely what the battle we were engaged in was going to be called, once anyone got round to naming it. Monmouth Courthouse was no more than half a mile from my present location. I wiped my face once more—this gesture did nothing for the perspiration, which was instantly renewed, but judging from the state of my three soggy handkerchiefs, was removing a fair amount of dirt from my […]